Library 2.0: The road ahead

It does seems somewhat arbitrary that a term like “Library 2.0″ can be coined, snatched up, and tossed about like a hacky-sack at Burning Man. I agree that it’s not quite the right label, but to be honest, I really don’t care–if we’re arguing over semantics, we’ve been derailed. So as I use the term “Library 2.0″ (L2), bear in mind that it’s only a way for me to refer to a collective of ideas.

Essentially, those of us who are familiar with the term “Library 2.0″ all assemble in the same theoretical nebulae when we read and talk about it, and that’s good enough for me. For the moment. But there is the real danger of getting mired in discussions like ‘what does it mean to be Library 2.0ish’. That’s why I think we ought to have a series of clear objectives that forge a path toward L2. I’ve put together a list of components that, for me, define a strategic vision for L2 in terms of general statements, questions that need to be asked, ideas that need to be drawn up, and unknowns that need to be discovered. It’s important for me to do this for myself because any time I’m in “dev mode” I need to have an ideological framework to work with.

Ongoing discussion: What is Library 2.0?
This is where most of the current L2 discussion seems to be centered, and for good reason. Why pursue something if you don’t know what it is, or whether it even exists? I love the current discussion because, despite everyone’s differing perceptions of L2, there is a common denominator emerging that defines some interesting boundaries for the term. Naturally, a concise definition of “Library 2.0″ is not going to happen–it’d be a house built on sand. Assuming that ongoing discussion is part of L2’s foundation seems to be the pragmatic thing to do. Pursuing any subsequent action should acknowledge that L2 has a core set of ideologies that are interpreted differently by many.

What are our current impediments?
I’ve talked a lot about the culpability of vendors when it comes to stifling innovation. I think the nature of vendor-library relationship is perhaps the largest battle we’re going to fight on this winding road and I predict a casualty, or two, among vendors who refuse to make way. Many vendors are still building SUVs in a hybrid world.

But vendors are not the only impediments to L2. It might be worthwhile to look a little closer to home. Your largest obstacles may lie within your own organizations. Perhaps you need to finally have that sit-down with your IT department. Maybe some of the changes heralded by L2 are threats to the old-timers. I have a feeling that many of you read about L2 and think to yourself, “it’d be nice to take our library in that direction, but..”. Finding solutions or workarounds to those caveats needs to be an important part of the collective discussion.

A perfect example, that has been discussed a little, is the fact that many librarians wish they had coders to implement their ideas. It’s a good example because having coders is the dividing line between the have’s and the have-not’s. At this point, it’s inevitable, but in the long term, that is an unacceptable disparity. For now, however, it’s the libraries with coders that have the burden and responsibility to build the prototypes for next-generation online services.

How do we overcome those impediments?
Librarians are smart people and I have faith that no impediment will go unaddressed. Of course, different problems have different degrees of complexity, but discussing and brainstorming possible solutions is the first step in dealing with any setback.

I previously mentioned that vendors are a large part of the problem, therefore it stands to reason that vendors need to be a large part of the solution. We need to be able to use the correct language when we draft RFPs or talk to their support teams. I drafted the ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights for two reasons. First, I wanted to give other libraries a very basic set of demands to present to their vendors. If vendors hear it enough, they might just crack the tiller over a degree or two and chart a new course. Second, I wanted to throw down the gauntlet with vendors themselves and, hopefully, open up a discourse with them. Of course, Talis is the only vendor to respond so far, and they are the only vendor to publicly acknowledge the existence, let alone the importance of L2. I think L2 scares the pants off most of the others.

It’s important to demand change not only from your vendors, but from anyone else who is stifling your library’s progress. Share your ideas and success stories so the rest of us can see how you overcame adversity. Also, share an analysis of your failures because those are just as important when it comes to making futures decisions and laying plans. Ironically, in the Web 2.0 world, being open and honest about your failures tends to bolster your credibility.

Who is going to facilitate this change?
You, for one. But before L2 can enter the mainstream, we’re going to need an “official voice” that endorses L2 from both a technology and human perspective. Once this happens, it’ll be easier for everyone to bring L2 up in an organization and make headway when it comes to implementation and, especially, buy-in. Of course, ALA comes to mind, but multiple voices of less authority can suffice, depending on context. For now, the debate over how much L2 matters is pertinent, but at some point it becomes farcical to defend the merits of L2 philosophy. An official ratification of L2 as a label would certainly shake loose some acceptance within organizations as well as put pressure on vendors to turn their sights toward L2. If you can, lobby for L2, spread the good news!

What, precisely do we want to offer?
I think we are at the point now where we need to be discussing, in detail, what types of features and services we want to offer under the auspices of L2. Tag cloud mock-ups, prototypes, RSS feeds, collaborative development, memes, and library blogs all serve as hard evidence of a life after Library 1.0. Aside from all that, however, so much focus is on ubiquitous web 2.0 sites like flickr and delicious. Events like Internet Librarian and the Code4Lib conference will undoubtedly serve as periodical collective brainstorming sessions, but what would be great is a clearinghouse of off-the-wall ideas for the practical application of Web 2.0 in the library setting. There are a few of us in the library-coder community who could certainly draw from that pool to create some interesting prototype services and applications.

Ultimately, what are we trying to achieve?
Every now and then, stop and ask yourself why this is all so important. Maintain perspective on your goals. For my part, I’d like to see L2 reach a ‘critical mass’ within the next two years. That’s an ambitious time-line by any standards when it comes to libraries, but think about the fact that the sooner we start harnessing the intelligence of our communities, the sooner we will be creating a living record of our time. Doesn’t that cut to the very core of our mission as libraries? What you want to achieve personally and what you want for your institution need to be aligned so that you can set a clear agenda for yourself as you begin tackling your projects.

L2 is not a fad.
Despite what some people may say about L2, it is not a passing fancy bandied about by a few hypertechno-literate librarians. L2 is part of an evolution that is taking place worldwide–a movement in which the threshold between technology and individuality is giving way. Those two seemingly disparate concepts are starting to bleed together, creating the emergence of a new culture. We can be a part of it, or we can be relics. As libraries, I think we have a unique moral obligation to usher our communities into it.

Bear in mind, this post is a brain-dump of questions and ideas that orbit L2 in my head. I’m certainly no authority on the future of L2, but I do have strong convictions about it and, therefore, my interpretation of L2 may reflect that. My desire is to build interesting, useful, and immersive tools for our users. A simple goal with a very complex path.

[update]Michael Stephens pointed me in the direction of this month’s SirsiDynix OneSource in which Stephen Abram takes a look at Library 2.0. Bear in mind that even though only Talis has engaged in public discussion, other vendors are quietly listening and developing strategies behind the scenes. What we don’t want, is a mud-slinging contest between vendors. They certainly don’t want that either, so expect most of them to inch in slowly and quietly.

It’s also worth noting that Sirsi actually does comply fairly well to the ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights, which is not an endorsement since I have no hands-on experience with their ILS, just a statement of fact. Any SirsiDynix customers want to review their API?[/update]

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Library 2.0: The road ahead,” an entry on blyberg.net

Comments are closed

My occasional Library 2.0-blogging-tennis partner John Blyberg over at Ann Arbour District Library agrees with me about how arbitrary the “Library 2.0″ term is. It does seems somewhat arbitrary that a term like “Library 2.0″ can be coined, snatch…

Jeff Young12.16.05 / 2pm

I wrote an open-source tool (named WikiD) to allow me to do exactly this kind of prototyping. A demo can be seen at http://alcme.oclc.org/wikid/. In essence, it throws OpenURL 1.0, SRW/U, OAI, RSS, etc. into a pile and adds a wiki-style user interface to manage it all. In some cases, things still need to be done behind the scenes, but I have enough patterns now that these typically turn out to be variations of one another. Feel free to contact me for details.

[…] You don’t like the “2.0” moniker? So what. John Blyberg reminds us that “if we’re arguing over semantics, we’ve been derailed.” And Stephen Abram is said to have cautioned us: “when librarians study something to death, we forget that death was not the original goal.” […]

[…] “If we’re arguing over semantics, we’ve been derailed.” Thus spake John Blyberg, and he says those sorts of things in meetings all the time, and takes the wind out of some magnificently superfluous tangents. He’s absolutely right, and the kerfuffle about the term ‘Library 2.0‘ could have been easily foreseen by the sufficiently jaded. […]

“But vendors are not the only impediments to L2. It might be worthwhile to look a little closer to home. Your largest obstacles may lie within your own organizations. Perhaps you need to finally have that sit-down with your IT department.”

Speaking as a network administrator for a library, this statement is freaking me out. What exactly you mean by this? If a thrust toward a more technologically integrated library is being fought by the IT department, shouldn’t they be asking why the IT department feels it’s a bad idea, instead of seeing them as an obstacle?

I get requests all the time for instant messaging, gaming machines, cd burners, open shares for people to download to, word processing machines with internet/floppy/usb access, and more. What I’d like to know is twofold: who’s paying for it and who’s got the plan to protect it? I see a lot of pom-pom waving for all the features of L2, but little concern for the steps required to secure this software, much of which is riddled with security vulnerabilities. Even companies that claim to offer fully protected OPAC systems (like Useful’s Discover solution) are highly suspect. If our shrinking budgets can barely keep up with the cost of licensing, firewalls, spam filters, etc., how can we be expected to pay for anything else. This L2 thing sounds great on paper, but it would sound even better if we could even begin to pay for it.

[…] among tech-savvy researchers and librarians for the past year now. But despite this, it seems that few can actually define it. Library Journal has an excellent article from Sept 1, 2006, which stops short of concisely […]

Alan Roberts07.17.07 / 9am

I have had similar experiences to the network admin. Most of the time that IT here pushes back on library requests is because the library people simply don’t understand the bigger picture.

Lib: “Oh we want to use this product”
IT: “Uh…how are you planning to populate that with data?”

From there I get one of two responses. Either:

a) Lib: “Oh, we didn’t think of that”

or

b) Lib: “Oh it uses LDAP, we use LDAP so we will just use LDAP”

…and of course you can replace “populate that with data” with other large scale problems (i.e. “Integrate that with our authentication infrastructure”, “Plan for failover with that”, “Secure that”, etc..) and “LDAP” can be replaced with a bunch of other poorly understood technologies or the perennial “lots of other institutions use this so why can’t we?”

I don’t really mean to pick on our Library here because this problem is spread across our institution but if my IT dept is pushing back its because there is something technically wrong with your approach and we aren’t in the business of delivering poor solutions.

As for the nomenclature (L2)? Considering the author didn’t say much about what exactly they mean it seems a bad idea to invent terms that don’t really say very much (or say altogether too much for that matter)
Just saying “mock-ups, prototypes, RSS feeds, collaborative development, memes, and library blogs” is actually far less information, from an implementation POV than you think. If you want to be taken seriously by an IT Department you need to provide a requirements list, show them wireframes or a project plan. Because, if they are anything like the shops I’m familiar with every single day they get someone who tells them about their big (entirely unimplementable) idea. It’s up to you to convince them that you’re different.

First of all I want to say awesome blog! I had a quick question that I’d like to ask if you don’t mind.
I was curious to know how you center yourself and clear your thoughts before writing.
I’ve had a tough time clearing my mind in getting my ideas out. I do enjoy writing however it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are lost just trying to figure out how to begin. Any suggestions or tips? Thanks!

Good day! This is kind of off topic but I need some guidance from an established blog.

Is it difficult to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about creating my own but
I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any points or suggestions? Many thanks